Newspoll: 51-49 to Coalition

Newspoll has opened its account for 2013 with an encouraging result for Labor, recording a primary vote six points higher than the previous poll of December 7-9.

The result of the first Newspoll for 2013 has been reported by AAP (your guess as to how that’s come about is as good as mine) and almost simultaneously by the ever-reliable James J, and it’s a relatively encouraging one for Labor who trail just 51-49 on two-party preferred, down from 54-46 in the final poll of 2012. The primary votes are 38% for Labor, up six on last time, with the Coalition and the Greens both down two, to 44% and 9% respectively. Julia Gillard is up two on approval to 38% and down three on disapproval to 49% while Tony Abbott is up one to 29% and down one to 58%. Gillard leads as preferred prime minister by 45-33, up from 43-34.

UPDATE (16/1/13): A Morgan face-to-face result covering both the previous two weekends (and presumably warranting more than the usual degree of caution on account of the holiday period) has the Coalition leading 51-49 when preferences are distributed as per the 2010 election result, and by 52-48 according to respondent allocation. The primary votes are 36.5% for Labor, 41.5% for the Coalition and 10.5% for the Greens. This follows what now looks an aberrant result in the final poll of last year, when Labor led 53.5-46.5 on previous election preferences and 52.5-47.5 on respondent-allocated.

UPDATE (19/1/13): AAP reports a ReachTEL poll of 511 respondents conducted for the United Voice union in Wayne Swan’s Brisbane seat of Lilley suggests he is heading for defeat, trailing LNP candidate Rod McGarvie 45% to 38% on the primary vote.

There is one more thing that registers with voters….and even with very conservative ones…..and that is that JG is a proven fighter. She has shown more than once that she will stand up for herself.

Voters know that the PM has to be a fighter, and even if they might not always agree with the PM, they really must know that the PM is willing and able to fight, because one day the PM may have to fight for the country.

JG is not by any measure a conventional politician. But she is a proven fighter. People will rally to this quality. She is no quitter. She has endurance, deep personal resources, reserves of dignity and strength that have been there for all to see. She is a physical expression of power and determination.

Abbott on the other had has come to signify the total absence of these irreplaceable virtues. He is just a shell..or maybe is just a hermit crab who has moved into borrowed housing. He is a political squatter.

I don’t believe the Coalition will dump Tony Abbott. I don’t believe Labor is in any sort of winning position at this stage. They have to many big interest groups lined up against them at the moment. I don’t think this is the time for counting chickens.

Thus my long term prediction. The trend is to minor parties away from majors.

Labor suffers less in this as the right wing is splitting. Appointing Abbott just slowed the process. The progressive split already happened. Those Green voters are more likely to vote Labor than conservative

I think that is why Labor is trying to scare the voters with prospect of Premier Chair Sniffer.

If they are resorting to that I may have overestimated their chances!

McGowan seems to be doing OK as leader. It’s just that he’s on a hiding to nothing against a first-term minority government of opposite shade to a struggling federal regime and headed by a reasonably popular Premier.

Kevin Bonham @ 105: I responded in the previous thread to your response there to me. While I had been talking about the House of Representatives, your comment gives rise to what may be an interesting question: what level of the primary vote in a Senate election, less than a quota, will suffice to ensure that a candidate cannot be excluded?

Fantastic poll. I think one of the reasons for this, as discussed by others here, is QLD. I have been on the gold coast for 2 weeks on holidays, and met an old friend from the Hunter. He has been here for 10 years. He is a typical swinging voter and voted for Newman last year, and lives in the electorate of Forde.

He is serious when he says he thinks that if there was an election now that Newman would lose. I tried to dissuade him from this position, but he would not be budged. I said they would lose many seats but enough to lose. He is really angry with Newman its hard to describe.

I really think that the Federal ALP vote is climbing in QLD due to Newmans cuts. Only tonight the Brisbane news had more news of cuts to the health system. From my observations here over the last couple of weeks the ALP could pick up Brisbane, Forde and Longman at a minimum.

So, I assume the PVO tweet was the first shot over the bows for the “they’re as bad as each other” strategy? I remember back when the journalists were all yawning and Annabel Crabb couldn’t be bothered getting out of bed. With the polls narrowing further, I guess we’ll be seeing more of that.

Prediction – Coalition will attempt to make QT a farce all year. They’ll ditch the attacks and the electricity bills and the Gillard grilling, and just make fools of themselves. And then attempt to shift the blame to the sitting Government. Look for standards of behaviour to fall further. And then we’ll get a rash of the “all politicians are as bad as each other” articles.

Much as I dislike polls and the chatter that surrounds them, this is an encouraging result for the ALP. It should give them a little morale boost. One swallow however does not a Summer make and when the mad monk says we are in for a dirty election campaign he is merely telegraphing his punches like the idiotic boxer he once was. The reporting of any good news for Gillard is always draped though in a technicolour coat of poisonous hues. The Sydney Morning Herald does its level best to make a rival’s report even more odious than the original. The first sentence is barely a dozen words old before the murderous ‘but’ chimes in and the rest of the article crackles with the sort of hissing and sneering usually associated with puppet shows. One can only hope that this level of amateur hour ‘reporting’ retreats to the sewer and the real gutter press embodied by the likes of Fran and Michelle returns to centre stage someday soon.

“Another opinion poll has shown Labor is still in an election losing position. They have clawed back some primary votes but remain behind. Warren Truss said today that it was only a matter of time and the nation is demanding an election now to put a stop to the rising debt and continued boat arrivals. ‘The nation cannot afford this uncertainty and instability’ he said.

Hey AB…I would like to think we can win WA too. The Libs are as ineffectual as it is possible to be….and the royalties for regions deal is a scam..of course you are right about the rail system, even if we are about 20 years too late, better than never, I think….

Kevin Bonham @ 105: I responded in the previous thread to your response there to me.

Yep, my misreading; apologies for that.

While I had been talking about the House of Representatives, your comment gives rise to what may be an interesting question: what level of the primary vote in a Senate election, less than a quota, will suffice to ensure that a candidate cannot be excluded?

I think it’s (v/(n+2)+1) votes, rounded down to nearest whole number, where v=number of formal votes and n=number of seats.

For instance supposing there are six seats and 80,000 votes. A candidate polling exactly 10,000 primaries can be excluded if seven other candidates also poll exactly 10,000 primaries each, and everyone else polls nothing, since there will then be a random draw to exclude one candidate. But if a candidate has 10,001 primaries then the most candidates who can be level with or ahead of them at any stage of the count is six. That means they will never fall below seventh and hence either get elected or be left defeated but not excluded.

For those thinking, or wanting to engage in combat with those who think, that this is some kind of outlier, look at the Newspoll trend:

50-51-51-54-51.

The 54 is the odd one out, not this. And it’s the 54 that prompted the PVO “no way back” article with its attendant twaddle about the impact of a single poll on “momentum” (which I disposed of at the time here: http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/the-silly-season-2-end-of-year-poll.html) . I do hope his recent “no safer bet” article declaring that Abbott will definitely be LOTO come the election even if the Coalition is losing in the polls proves equally wrong.

Once again, short-term momentum in polls doesn’t exist. The average follow-up to a move in the polls in one direction is a move in the other.

Apple Blossom
I also don’t expect the ALP to win in WA. As far as the voters are concerned, CB has been OK and we don’t like to change too much. However, I expect Troy Boy to take over mid term and then there will be a serious contest.
Federally, I expect the ALP to win.

what level of the primary vote in a Senate election, less than a quota, will suffice to ensure that a candidate cannot be excluded?

You can be elected to the Senate with any number of votes, provided that at each distribution, there is someone with fewer votes than you. So if you poll two votes, you will not be eliminated if someone else has polled one vote, and if that person preferences you, so you have three votes, you will not be eliminated if someone else has 2 votes, and so on. In practice, of course that is unlikely. But Robert Wood was elected in NSW in 1987 with 48,238 votes (1.5%), Fielding was elected in Vic in 2004 with 55,551 (1.8%), and Madigan was elected in Vic in 2010 with 74,813 (2.3%).

Kevin Bonhan @ 122: That makes sense, and it’s interesting to see arising in a natural context a formula which looks very much like a hybrid of the Imperiali and Droop quotas.

Yes it’s actually the Droop quota as it would apply if there was one extra seat, which follows because the Droop quota determines the minimum vote with which a finish in the top n places (and hence election) is assured, while this formula determines the minimum vote with which remaining in the top (n+1) places (and hence non-exclusion) is assured.

There are some STV elections where the last candidate to miss out is excluded and their preferences distributed, but this only applies when the finishing order actually matters. (For instance in Tasmanian council elections, it sometimes happens that there is an election for, say, six four year terms plus a two year term. So the candidate who finishes 8th is excluded and thrown to determine which winning candidate is 7th and only gets the two-year term.)

Kevin Bonham @ 134: That opens up a whole new discussion about the appropriateness of using order of election to determine long and short terms, and section 282 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act. But not for tonight.

That anyone takes opinion polls seriously is more the marvel. It’s right up there with astrology and entrail reading in my book. A lot of highly intelligent and clever people take them seriously though so the rest of us just have to take our lumps and endure the shock and bore contest that surrounds them. There are only ever going to be two parties that rule this country so prognostications about what is at best a 50/50 proposition strikes me as being utterly unworthy of attention. An entirely parasitic industry has sprung up around them and the unfortunate host is the political pundit. You see them everywhere these days stroking non-existent beards or perfecting their furrowed brows in the reflections of smart shop windows in even smarter suburbs. At home, when the curtains are drawn, they work on their sneers and emaciated metaphors until the blood of their loved ones pours freely from their ears. The internet saved a lot of them from the mad house and the rest just ended up here.

This case is one of the most compelling and tragic things I’ve known of. Violence in all its dimensions…too much at times to think through. Violence, depravity, deceit, shame, revenge, injustice, bereavement, the aftershocks, punishment.

It is very difficult to deal with.

It reminds me, too, of a place I go to have curry sometimes. It is run by a couple of Afghan women, who are as hard-working and thorough as it is possible to be. One is a refugee, the other a student who is hoping to get PR.

They play a lot of Indian Cable TV Music Vids in their restaurant. So I watch this while I have my tandoori, naan and raita. I’ve been learning this music, taking it in. The cable is entirley popular/contemporary music vids.

The music is invariably sentimentalist and escapist. And the visual set-up-scenes that support the music are also invariably escapist: glamorous, with references to broadway stages and beauty pageantry, colourful, with lots of themed dancing; and endless variations on the same theme. The leading male figure chooses/selects (seduces by his own will, is the idea) and/or woos and/or fights for and/or is nursed and/or is implored by a supplicant female – always a sensitive beauty, always alone, always subordinate, always helpless in her need for the male, sometimes resisting but always becoming his possession. This is played again and again to hold up the most lifeless vocal style you can imagine.

The women are beautiful. but they are somehow enslaved. It is torture to watch. The subjection and possession of women is mass fantasy in India.

AB, it is hard to keep the spirits up if you think a loss is on the cards. But I think your candidate must have a chance. She seems like a dedicated person…and Barnett is not going to walk away with a win, not at all. Labor is having a proper go on the ground.

Dorrie Evans @ 138, this is simply fabulous. However, I do believe an emaciated metaphor would a sorry sight and would not last long. Surely such a production would stray onto the road outside, where the ranger would find it. It could be taken to a foster home and fattened up; then turned into a healthy simile before being released back into the community, where it could lead a happy, gainful life, possibly hitching up with imagery and raising a family.

That anyone takes opinion polls seriously is more the marvel. It’s right up there with astrology and entrail reading in my book.

I shan’t be rushing out to buy your book, sounds to me it might be right up there with astrology and entrail reading.

Nate Silver (and several others) used opinion poll data to predict the results in every single state for the US presidential election. Astrologers and entrail-readers simply don’t get results like that by chance.

There is indeed a lot of dimwitted punditry that surrounds polls, much of it coming from people who should know much better, but that doesn’t mean polls are useless. It just means people should be careful about over-ambitious readings of them.

As Kevin showed and I stated earlier, the last 54 was the odd one out. A symptom of all the AWU hoo-ha. It showed that the Libs can still get a bounce out of manufactured scandal, but it’s short lived.

It demonstrates how desperate Abbott was late last year. They surely knew they had nothing, but still Abbott sent out Julie to stop the bleeding he was copping especially with women. It worked, for a while. But it solved none of the massive problems Abbott faces going into an election year.

About this blog

William Bowe is a doctoral candidate with the University of Western Australia’s Discipline of Political Science and International Relations. He has been running the electoral studies blog The Poll Bludger since January 2004, independently until September 2008 and thereafter with Crikey.